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User blog:RRabbit42/One award, two newspapers and a third book
In the past two months, we've had three significant events happen for Phoebe and Her Unicorn, which I'll shorten to just Phoebe hereafter. The first is that the first book, Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A Heavenly Nostrils Chronicle, just won the Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award for "Books for middle readers (ages 9 to 12), presented by the Washington State Book Awards. The Awards are for authors born in Washington state to recognize "literary merit, lasting importance, and overall quality of the publication", according to Wikipedia. Dana said she wanted to beat Ken Jennings, who had a 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy, just so she could brag about being able to do something that doesn't happen very often. Well, now she can. The second was the announcement on August 24, 2015 that pre-orders are now open on book #3, Unicorn vs. Goblins. Dana revealed the title of the book three weeks prior. From the title, this book will cover the events when the goblins appear, and should begin with the comic that was published on June 17, 2013 since book #2 ended with June 16th.. Dana said that there's one more book that will be published under her current contract. Future books will depend on how well books 3 and 4 sell. So obviously, both Dana and I encourage you to purchase each of her books. I have two copies of the first two books, with one set being signed by Dana right after book #2 was released. Electronic formats are nice, but I prefer printed copies. The third event took place two weeks ago on September 27, 2015 when the comic was picked up by two more newspapers in Washington state close to where Dana lives. They are The News Tribune of Tacoma and The Olympian of Olympia. Both run the same comics and the "Take Time" banner for the comics page lists the websites of both newspapers, the result of being owned by the same company. Phoebe takes the place of Get Fuzzy, which has been in reruns for the daily comic strips for the past four years. Several newspapers had already dropped Get Fuzzy because of this, and there also hasn't been any explanation why it's in re-runs when the Sunday comics are typically new. When The Washington Post in Washington, D.C. dropped it two years ago, they stated that the cost of the strip was higher than others and they couldn't see paying that extra cost for a lot of reruns. Phoebe was put in the #4 spot on the page where Get Fuzzy had been. That was probably the easiest way to make the switch, but I believe it's a good indication of Phoebe's popularity. It could have easily been put at the bottom next to Dilbert, which replaced For Better or For Worse. (For the Sunday edition, it also takes the spot where Get Fuzzy had been at the bottom of page 2.) That's another comic that had gone into reruns seven years ago, but artist Lynn Johnston originally was going to have a mix of reruns and "new-runs" where she kept the original artwork but changed the dialogue. That lasted for just under two years, when it switched to straight reruns that had other kinds of alterations, such as minimizing or completely changing the artwork when the storyline involved one of the kids being spanked. We've seen a few reruns of Phoebe this year. Some of it was the result of working on the newspaper launch. Others have been individual repeats to help bring new readers up to speed. A few repeats here and there are nothing I'm concerned with at the moment. Depending on which web browser you're using, you may or may not get the prompt to login to continue reading the article about the newspapers picking up the comic on The News Tribune website. The article is also found on The Olympian's website. If you have any problems watching the video, try going directly to the page with the video. I really don't read newspapers much these days, or even listen to the news on the radio or TV, but I will be getting a subscription to the Tribune just so I can help support Dana with one more reader of her comic. Category:Community News Category:Blog posts